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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923462">berries beyond the fence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay'>carloabay</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>you meant so well [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Injury, Europe, F/F, Gore, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Past Tense, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), a lot of blood, sam wilson is the coolest guy in the room, wlw/mlm solidarity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:01:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,988</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923462</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>How many lives can spin through the reel in the space of a second?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Natasha Romanov &amp; Sam Wilson, Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>you meant so well [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138709</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>berries beyond the fence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He jammed the gun and tossed it to the side. The assassin bled out onto the floor through her mouth, jaw twisted against the planks.</p><p>He cracked open the window, stuck his head out. No one was coming. She'd been sent alone.</p><p>He coughed, hacking up phlegm that tasted like metal, wiped his nose with the back of his hand.</p><p>It was time to move again.</p><p>∆</p><p>"You can start talking now," Sam said, laying his finger safely beside the trigger. Greene grinned maniacally.</p><p>"I'm afraid I will have to decline."</p><p>"You're a Nazi. This may be the easiest trigger I've ever had to pull," Sam reminded him. He was running out of time. Something tightened behind his sternum as the clock on the scorched wall wicked away the seconds.</p><p>"Cut off one head..."</p><p>"Yeah, yeah, we don't all have nine lives," Sam interrupted. "And you definitely don't. I'm gettin' kinda tired of that bullshit motto, anyway."</p><p>
  <em>Wick, wick, wick.</em>
</p><p>"And which of your lives is this?" Greene asked, tilting his head. Pretty brave for a man on his knees.</p><p>"Oh, I know I'm on my eighty-seventh chance by now."</p><p>"Then you'll know that you have to take no for an answer when the wall becomes impenetrable."</p><p>"Nothing's impenetrable. What's in the cabinets?" Sam snapped. Greene shrugged.</p><p>"You should have checked, before blowing them to cinders."</p><p>"Heard of a guy called Barnes?" Sam asked, knuckles tightening. Greene laughed, his face crumpling like an aged piece of paper, and the sound that wheezed from his throat wasn't healthy.</p><p>"The Soldier, yes? He is long, long gone. He will not be back."</p><p>"Funnily enough, I'd figured that out," Sam replied dryly.</p><p>"He'll run out of road before long," Greene hissed. "And when he does...Hydra will be there."</p><p>"You're useless," Sam muttered. He twitched the gun to nearest cabinet. It was dented, but not in pieces. "Open that." Greene shuffled over on his knees.</p><p>The door of the cabinet made an unholy sound, a screech, as it popped open, and Greene winced. A pile of creased manila folders spilt over the floor. Sam dug through his pockets with one hand, came up with a spare shoelace, and tossed it to Greene.</p><p>"Tie them together." Greene obliged, rolling the files up and knotting them securely. Sam glanced at the clock again.</p><p>"I see you are out of time, Sergeant Wilson," Greene said, head bent, still clutching the files. Sam frowned, fighting the instinct to back away.</p><p>"Give me the files," he said, stepping carefully forwards.</p><p>"No," Greene growled. Sam ground his teeth, and pulled the trigger. His ears rung with the bang, and Greene screamed.</p><p>A bullet had bitten into Greene's thigh, and he slammed his palm flat against it, blood bubbling through his fingers. Sam snatched the files and backed away, groping behind him for the door handle. Greene looked up with gritted teeth, eyes red-rimmed.</p><p>"What's a little blood to you, boy?" he snapped. "You are going to shoot me in the head, yes?"</p><p>"I like to think I'm above that," Sam said, and then the door burst open behind him, the corner slammed into his head and</p><p>∆</p><p>Ice chips crackling in the slats of his arm, ice creeping over his eyelashes.</p><p>They sent two assassins. He broke their necks.</p><p>They were tracking him. Maybe it was the arm, maybe they were buried under his skin, poisonous.</p><p>It was time to move again.</p><p>∆</p><p>Sam woke choking. Rope tight around his neck, blood thick in his throat, and he rasped and coughed and spat, spittle collecting on his chin, terror clawing behind his eyes. His heartbeat rushed in his head. His feet kicked uselessly in the air.</p><p>He wormed, and his arms were stuck, twisted behind his back and secured with sharp plastic. He panicked, torquing, the rope burning under his jaw, drowning in a vacuum, and his pulse pounded, slower, slower, blurred colours going grey around the edges of his vision.</p><p>"Cut him down." The pressure released on his throat just like that, and Sam dropped, crumpled on a hard surface, legs caught awkwardly beneath him.</p><p>A thick hand shoved him in the shoulder, and Sam rolled with it, onto his back, crushing his hands under his hip. Someone ripped the remnants of the noose away.</p><p>He gasped, still catching his breath, and licked blood off his lips.</p><p>"Sit him up." Hands under his armpits, huge and chafing, and someone threw him carelessly into a chair. It tilted for a second, then thumped down onto all four legs, and Sam let his head fall back, tried to get his bearings.</p><p>Nice white ceiling. Someone looped Sam's arms around the back of the chair and cuffed him loosely to it. His left eye was throbbing, almost stuck closed, and the back of his head ached like all hell. Sam blinked away tears and sweat, and a man in a chair opposite him swam into vision. Thick grey hair, sharply dressed.</p><p>"Nice suit," Sam slurred. "Armani?"</p><p>"I am Aleksander Lukin," said the man, without preamble. Russian, maybe. Figures. Sam squinted at him. "And I want the Soldier back."</p><p>"He's moved on," Sam replied, blood rattling in his lungs. "Doesn't have time for old flames, man." Lukin merely blinked.</p><p>"I am not a joker, Mr Wilson."</p><p>"That's Sergeant to you," Sam said. He tested the cuffs on his wrists. Nothing gave. Feet still bound. He was fucked. Lukin slid one hand into a tailored trouser pocket.</p><p>"Then I suppose we will have to do this the hard way."</p><p>"Works for me," Sam mumbled. Did he have a tooth loose?</p><p>∆</p><p>He stabbed his fingers into the chain links, heaving himself up, arm by arm. His boot toes slipped uselessly on the rusty metal.</p><p>In the fading light, the building beyond was squat and ivy-choked. Grey, squeezed of all its evil blood.</p><p>He reached the bent top of the fence, grabbed at the barbed wire with the metal hand, ripped it aside, and slung one leg over the top. The wire snagged on his hair, his coat. It was a while before he realised it had left a bloody scratch down his shin.</p><p>He let go, and it sprang back into place. He extricated his leg. The sun glimmered tearfully at him through the trees, and he let go of the fence.</p><p>Fell.</p><p><em>Crash</em>, into brambles, air knocked out of him in one punch, he wheezed for a second.</p><p>Lay there. The clouds grew sparse overhead.</p><p>He rolled onto his side, and the clear ground beside the brambles was hard and cold, he staggered on it, gained footing.</p><p>He pulled a shred of clothing carefully from the thorns and tucked it into his pocket.</p><p>He made his way towards the building.</p><p>∆</p><p>Every breath of air was a thin whistle through clogged vents. In, out, in, out.</p><p>His tongue was massive and dry.</p><p><em>Which of your lives is this</em>?</p><p>Sam nodded off again.</p><p>∆</p><p>"I need a favour." It sounded weak, over the crackling line. Sharon frowned at her pasta.</p><p>"You okay?"</p><p>"I said I need a favour."</p><p>"And?" She wasn't going to agree right away. God only knew what kind of stupid thing--</p><p>"How do you feel about Liechtenstein?"</p><p>"Never been."</p><p>"Pack your bags." The line clicked, whined into a dial tone. Sharon glared at her phone, the screen blinking innocently at her. Damn it.</p><p>∆</p><p>He tossed the papers into a pile on the floor, shredding them easily, some damp with water damage, some stiff with age.</p><p>1942, 43, 44, 45.</p><p>He flipped the '45 file open.</p><p>
  <em>James B Barnes</em>
</p><p>
  <em>North American. White. Male.</em>
</p><p>He skipped a few lines, ink blurring. Hesitated.</p><p>It was right there. Read a couple more sentences, and he'd know. Everything.</p><p>He'd know what to do, though. He'd know to cut himself open and dig out the poison.</p><p>What did it matter? Blood in the pursuit of something safer, sweeter.</p><p>He kept reading.</p><p>∆</p><p>"I thought you weren't going to make it for a hot minute."</p><p>"Good to see you too."</p><p>"What, no excuses?" There was a hint of a grin. Sharon felt bared, stripped down by the security cameras.</p><p>"You know me," she muttered. Natasha took her bag, nails scraping down the inside of Sharon's wrist. Sharon didn't catch her eye.</p><p>"Let's get coffee."</p><p>∆</p><p>'64, '65, '66. He was right. Poison under the skin. Hand-drawn diagrams, imprint paper. Precise and cold.</p><p>The pursuit of something sweeter hurt like hell.</p><p>He wasn't an engineer, or a biologist. He was a guy with steady hands and good vision and a whole lot of old surgical tools.</p><p><em>A fox will chew off his own leg to escape from a trap</em>.</p><p>The first tracker was tiny, and it came from his knee with a string of blood. He crushed it between two fingers.</p><p>The second tracker, under his collarbone. He was grey and faceless in the mould-spotted mirror, but his hands didn't shake.</p><p>The wound gaped, blood spotting and pooling on the ground.</p><p><em>Something sweeter</em>. He threw up, projectile, onto the wall, just watery bile. His eyes stung, and his fingernails got thick and stinking with blood.</p><p>Snot and tears congealed on his chin, he gritted his teeth and ground the third tracker out from his hip with a screwdriver, flung it into the darkness to hear it crack.</p><p>Everything stung, agony from the pits he'd made in his own skin. He stuffed them with gauze, helplessly watched as they seeped pink, then red, and then maybe neon green right before he passed out.</p><p>∆</p><p>"You're wasting your time," Sam managed. Lukin twisted a ring around and around on his little finger. "I don't know where he is, either."</p><p>If his ears hadn't been ringing, he would have sworn he heard a rumble above them. Like thunder, or someone trying to move a bed.</p><p>"I will squeeze you, boy," Lukin replied. His eyes were hollows, blank and white. Sam's vision kept swirling. "You will give in." Sam straightened his neck, flicked out his tongue to taste salt.</p><p>"Nothin' to give," he said, and braced himself for the crack of Lukin's hand across his face.</p><p>The door opened instead.</p><p>A noise of outraged protest, and a gunshot, and Sam flinched. His wrists ached. A heavy, wet thud.</p><p>Boots on the floor, quick and light, and then someone jammed small fingers under his jaw, digging into his pulse point.</p><p>He wanted to tell them to back off, because <em>ow</em>, but he couldn't open his eyes again.</p><p>"Hey, Wilson."</p><p>Romanoff. The door opened again.</p><p>"He alive?"</p><p>"Don't know."</p><p>Two ladies, then. That was his rescue party. He wanted to say something witty, <em>You guys really thought this through</em>, but his jaw was locked shut.</p><p>"Let's get going, then, before they blow us up."</p><p>"Cranky. Help me, he's a lump."</p><p>"It's muscles," Sam croaked, voice barely more than a whisper.</p><p>"So he is alive," said the second lady, dryly.</p><p>"Cake," Romanoff teased.</p><p>"Muscles," Sam insisted.</p><p>"Where the hell's Carter?" Romanoff asked as she sawed off the wrist bindings. Sam rolled his aching shoulders.</p><p>"She's caught up, floor above," said the second lady. So, three ladies. Sam cracked an eyelid open, and a small face peered at him. Black hair, ponytail, was all he could about make out. "Hi." She cut the rope around his feet.</p><p>"Hey," Sam replied. She looped an arm under his shoulder, small hand gripping his back. Together, she and Romanoff hauled him to his feet. "Sorry about this," Sam grumbled to the black-haired lady. There was tears and blood stinging both eyes. He could barely see.</p><p>"Don't I get an apology?" Romanoff teased.</p><p>"Cake?" Sam retorted, and she laughed, digging a pistol from her holster. His ankles rolled against the hard floor.</p><p>"Don't say it," Romanoff warned, checking the door before dragging him through. Sam waited a second.</p><p>"You two are tiny." Romanoff punched him in the shoulder, and Sam held back a gasp of pain.</p><p>"Rogers will have a fit when he sees you," she said. The black-haired lady pulled a radio from no where. Her bullet vest dug into Sam's armpit.</p><p>"Carter, come in," she growled down the mouthpiece. Sam started to regret the 'tiny' comment. Hell, she was scary.</p><p>"Upper floor clear," Carter panted down the radio.</p><p>"What's your grand plan?" Sam asked.</p><p>"Not dying would be nice," Romanoff said breezily. Someone rounded the corner ahead and she shot them in the throat.</p><p>"I'll hold you to that," Sam said wearily.</p><p>"Just don't doze off on us," Romanoff warned.</p><p>He didn't.</p><p>∆</p><p>The arm was drilled into his collarbone, his sternum.</p><p>He flipped through the pages with panicked fingers, thick nails, hinges, a mess of bone.</p><p>He swore in four languages. His breath started to come short. He didn't look at the arm. Didn't move it. Didn't look.</p><p>A muscle shook in his thigh.</p><p>
  <em>Chew it off like an animal. Sweet, sweet salvation. Berries beyond the fence.</em>
</p><p>Loosened the screws. They squealed in their sockets. His chest ached and bled, his ribs creaked when he yanked the screws out.</p><p>He pried the plates back from the scar tissue, messy and thick around the joint. Pink, red, angry. Skin over his shoulder, folding into the joint, and then the plates had overlapped, before he pried them away. He didn't look inside.</p><p>Brave, be brave.</p><p>He looked inside. Bare bone. Lights winked at him, electrical, blue and green. He stuck a screwdriver in between <em>him</em> and <em>metal him</em>. Wiggled it.</p><p>It caught on wire. Plastic covered, looped. He dragged the wire out with the screwdriver. Blue, green, red, brown coloured, and before he could lose his nerve, he scrabbled for the pliers and cut them.</p><p>Nothing happened. The lights died inside the arm. Nothing happened. Did the arm die, too?</p><p>Like a doctor, chopping back a limb to save infection: metal, poisonous, a red dot on a map. He was crying, sniffling.</p><p>Pathetic, like a child.</p><p>He didn't want to cut off his arm.</p><p>Brave, brave. Someone was in his head, <em>brave boy, молодец</em>.</p><p>
  <em>A fox will gnaw its own leg off-</em>
</p><p>He groaned, tongue between his teeth, and looked down, into the arm. His tongue began to bleed, and he coughed up a coppery taste, like the arm was winding its way into him with plastic covered wires and metal melted around his spine, slipping into his brain.</p><p>There was metal in his shoulder, silver, melded into hard bone, and he started to shiver, he didn't want to cut off his arm, hyperventilating, shallow breath and the cold drip of blood on the floor.</p><p>There was his shoulder socket, glittering with silver, and then half an inch down, more metal gulped up his bone.</p><p>"I can't," he whined, gasped.</p><p>It will hurt, <em>fuck</em> it will hurt too much.</p><p>
  <em>-will gnaw its own leg off to escape from-</em>
</p><p>There was a saw. There was a saw in front of his knee. He looked into the mirror and a ghostly face stared back, a wrecked shoulder, like shrapnel sticking out of a flesh wound, the light blinked above him, spat sparks.</p><p>
  <em>The fox will cut its mouth, desperate to escape. Leg ground down to the bone.</em>
</p><p>Tears blotching on his papery cheeks.</p><p>He must have blacked out for a second. Because the world turned greyish.</p><p>Cut it off below the joint. Cut the muscle and the metal strings to the joint, and it would <em>pop</em> out.</p><p>Brave, be brave, boy.</p><p>He reached for the saw, and set the teeth to his arm.</p><p>∆</p><p>"Ow."</p><p>"Sit still."</p><p>"I'm Sam," he said, wincing as she dabbed harshly at the grazes on his face. The bed was plush, comforter rising up around his thighs.</p><p>"She doesn't care," Romanoff called over her shoulder, and she disappeared into the bathroom before Sam could make a face at her. He screwed up his nose at the blue patterned wallpaper instead. The black-haired lady rolled her eyes.</p><p>"Melinda May."</p><p>"Nice to meet you."</p><p>The room was pretty. Small, twin beds, but comfortable. Outside, a donkey made a sound like a car starting.</p><p>"This is all you got?" Carter asked incredulously, flipping through Greene's bent files.</p><p>"That's very valuable, Peggy Carter's Niece," Sam retorted. Carter's hands stilled. She gave him a dark look over her shoulder.</p><p>"You're very injured, Wilson," she said, slow.</p><p>"Nice observation," Sam replied cheerfully. May poked him in the ribs, and pain shot through his torso. "<em>Ow</em>," he growled.</p><p>"Definitely broken," May said, poker face. Sam glared.</p><p>"Don't feel like getting <em>more</em> injured, do you?" Carter asked, inquiring eyebrow. Sam hesitated.</p><p>"I feel like I'm outnumbered by scary lady spies," he conceded. May snorted. Carter grunted and returned to the files.</p><p>Romanoff came out of the shower smelling like strawberries and breezed by the bed. Sam felt greasy, in all his bruised splendour.</p><p>"What did he get?" Romanoff asked, pressing her chin into Carter's shoulder. Sam looked away, and when he caught May's eye, she was furiously concentrated on his broken ribs again. Carter muttered something.</p><p>"Do you two wanna get a room?" May said, deadpan, and in Sam's peripheral vision, Carter and Romanoff edged away from each other.</p><p>Carter looked angry.</p><p>Romanoff looked like she'd stuck her hand in a vat of hot oil.</p><p>Sam stared at his own fingers.</p><p>∆</p><p>The arm lay limp, glinting on the half-dark edge of the circle of white that the lamp above made.</p><p>Metal shavings, blood, bone dust. A grind echoed in one ear, worming out the other as the scream of a wounded animal.</p><p>The arm lay dead, dull in the half-dark, on the edge of the circle of-</p><p>He panted into the floor, a pool of blood cooling and drying around his face.</p><p>
  <em>When the leg is gone, the fox cannot stand. It will die of infection, in reach of the berries.</em>
</p><p>"I'm sorry," he sobbed, and time passed between his teeth like a drug dream.</p><p>∆</p><p>"So."</p><p>"I loved it while you weren't talking," Romanoff said instantly, flashing him a too-quick smile.</p><p>"<em>So</em>," Sam repeated. "Do you have a grand plan extending beyond <em>not dying would be nice</em>?"</p><p>"Sure," Romanoff said, hunkering down to do her laces up. There was a massive bruise discolouring half her collarbone, under her shirt. Carter was buried in the files. May was nursing a beer from room service, boots up on the bed. Romanoff straightened, stole May's beer, and took a sip. "We save the world, we all go home."</p><p>"Hm," Sam grunted. A question about Steve was on the tip of his tongue. He buried it under the bruises.</p><p>Romanoff was watching him like a predator. May snatched her beer away and pressed the glass to a swelling on her jaw.</p><p>"Steve's a little tied up in Berlin right now," she said casually. Sam saw Carter's shoulders go tight. Then relax.</p><p>May's phone beeped, and she picked it up, half-lidded eyes.</p><p>"Jesus," she muttered. She swung her boots off the bed and sat up, blinking tightly.</p><p>"What is it?" Carter asked.</p><p>"I've been called back," May said. She downed the rest of the beer and tossed the bottle playfully at Romanoff, who caught it right before it hit her nose. "Nice meeting you, Wilson." She bent to snag the strap of a rucksack by the bathroom, and then was out the door without a further sound.</p><p>The latch clicked closed, and Romanoff stared at Sam.</p><p>"<em>Nice meeting you</em>?" she repeated incredulously. "Did you seriously just make friends with Melinda May?"</p><p>"One less scary spy lady," Carter put in. Romanoff didn't acknowledge her.</p><p>∆</p><p>He shivered. The light was turning the pool of blood silvery and thick. It was crusting onto his hand.</p><p>He was heavy-off without the arm.</p><p>He felt like he could wiggle his fingers, though. Like maybe he could reach for the saw again and grind through the other shoulder.</p><p>Sickening rhythm. Like he was chewing through his own body.</p><p>∆</p><p>Wilson fell asleep on top of the comforter, one arm dangling off the side of the bed.</p><p>Sharon was in the bathroom, mumbling into her work phone, spinning some story about her aunt and the cold weather back in America.</p><p>Natasha flipped idly through the files. It wasn't much. Locations, coordinates, photographs of chambers and rooms and equipment, everything sickeningly grey.</p><p>She shuddered and let the file fall closed again.</p><p>Sharon came out of the bathroom, quiet on the soft carpet, and tossed her phone onto the second bed. She dragged a hand through her hair, frizzy waves, and there were blue veins smudging her under-eye.</p><p>"Sharon-"</p><p>"I'm tired," Sharon retorted, and Natasha bit her tongue. Sharon collapsed onto the second bed, still in jacket and jeans, and closed her eyes. Natasha waited.</p><p>Within minutes, Sharon's breathing evened out, steady, smoothed over from the angry huffing. Natasha waited.</p><p>Ten minutes more, and Sharon fell asleep.</p><p>Natasha slipped out of the room barefoot.</p><p>The stairs creaked like old bones, and the banister was splintered at the bottom. She slipped through reception unnoticed, out into the sun, the gentle noise of the late country afternoon, slow cars, bleating animals.</p><p>Steve arrived in a tiny taxi, massive shoulder pressed against the window, and extricated himself with extraordinary care when the car drew to a stop, and the tinny engine cut out. He paid the driver handsomely, and stood there, hands awkwardly stuffed in his pockets, as the taxi drew away again.</p><p>Natasha slunk up behind him.</p><p>"Boo," she said, over his shoulder. Steve, to his credit, looked only mildly surprised.</p><p>"Where are your shoes?" he asked, bending to grab his bag. Natasha wiggled her bare toes in the dust.</p><p>∆</p><p>He screamed when he cut the muscle. It sounded human in the dark.</p><p>Sobbed when he cut the wires, and they slid from under his skin, slimy with blood. Little by little, he cut away the joint.</p><p>His socket was metal, too. Less metal. The drawings showed metal in his spine, ribs. He couldn't cut all of himself away.</p><p>His skin folded over the socket.</p><p>He bled, and bled.</p><p>He found a blowtorch.</p><p>He had to crawl, weak and fever-shaking, knees bruising on the hard floor, but he found it.</p><p>There was a little gas left. He switched it on and off, the blue flame swimming and dance back and forth like a little show act.</p><p>His entire side was drenched in blood, tacky, cooling. He doused himself in water from a little clear rivulet in the floor, lapped it up like a dog.</p><p>Every breath was shorter, his heart like a hummingbird's.</p><p>He switched the torch on again.</p><p>∆</p><p>Steve raised his eyebrows when he saw Sharon prostrate on the bed, one knee hanging over the edge.</p><p>His eyebrows shot into his hairline when he caught sight of poor bruised Sam, sprawled over the comforter.</p><p>"Long day?" he whispered. His foot inched towards Sam. Natasha ignored him, and shut the door loudly behind her. Sharon jerked awake, stared blearily around the room, then saw Steve and scrambled to sit up. Steve waved awkwardly. "Neighbour."</p><p>"Captain Rogers," Sharon replied, flushing furiously and scrabbling her hair back into a ponytail. She glared at Natasha. Natasha shrugged at the floor.</p><p>"Is he okay?" Steve asked, nodding towards Sam.</p><p>"I don't know, ask him," Natasha replied, crankier than she should have been. Sharon slipped into the bathroom, head ducked, bag in hand, and Natasha sat heavily down on the imprint in the bedcovers. Only once the lock had clicked over. There was dirt between her toes.</p><p>Steve put a hand on Sam's shoulder, shook him gently.</p><p>"Hey, Sam," he said, soft. Natasha dug her phone from her back pocket to give them some privacy. She flicked idly through her empty message inbox, listened to the shower start up with an unhealthy grind from the bathroom.</p><p>Her phone flashed at her, and Natasha jerked to attention.</p><p>
  <strong>Today</strong>
</p><p>Melinda: <strong>I'm back in twenty two hours</strong> 12:04</p><p><strong>don't rush</strong> 12:04</p><p>Melinda: <strong>very funny</strong> 12:04</p><p><strong>Sam misses you </strong>12:05</p><p>Melinda: <strong>you talk too much </strong>12:05</p><p>
  <em>This number is no longer in service.</em>
</p><p>Natasha put her phone down, fighting off a smile. Steve was sat heavily on the side of Sam's bed.</p><p>"Can I have five more minutes, or are we off to fight Nazis right away?" Sam mumbled, wiping his eyes. He propped himself up on one elbow, wincing.</p><p>"You're not going anywhere like that," Natasha replied, kicking her shoes up on the comforter.</p><p>"I'm taking over the punching from here," Steve said. Sam relaxed into his pillows, and Steve picked up the files from the table in between the two beds. Smoky and bent, and he flicked through them. "Jesus," he said, softly, in between his teeth.</p><p>"It's a bad lot," Sam admitted, eyes half-closed already. Natasha picked her phone up again awkwardly.</p><p>The door to the bathroom cracked open, steam wafting into the room, and Sharon, dressed again, slipped around the edge of it. Her shirt was loose around her shoulders, aged sweatpants hanging off her hips, the cuffs rolled up. Natasha caught a glimpse of a faded S.H.I.E.L.D logo and a sliver of damp skin as Sharon marched past the bed.</p><p>"So what's the action plan?" Sharon asked, squeezing the ends of her hair through her towel. Steve looked up vaguely from the file, blinking.</p><p>"Oh," he said. "I got a lead in Berlin."</p><p>"A lead to where?"</p><p>"An old farm on the outskirts of Susuman," he replied, rolling the files up in his big hands.</p><p>"And that is..." Sam said, trailing off, glancing from Natasha to Steve.</p><p>"Eastern Russia. Kinda mountainous," Natasha offered. Susuman, a farm. Remote, but near to civilisation. Not a Hydra preference -- no, this would be the Russians themselves. </p><p>"Fun," Sam said, fake cheerful. Natasha had to agree. Already there was cold creeping into her lungs, mist and frost forming in her thoughts.</p><p>"Transport? Clothing?" Sharon cut in, and Natasha almost baulked at the cold tone.</p><p>"Everything's organised," Steve replied, but Sharon only had cool eyes for Natasha.</p><p>"Unfortunately, you're both about as talkative as Nick Fury in a corner," she snapped. Steve looked abashed. Natasha met her gaze. Sharon pulled a very large crew neck over her head, and emerged tousled and cross.</p><p>"I've got the room across the hall for me and Carter," Natasha said, standing. "You two have got this all to yourselves."</p><p>"Thanks," Sam mumbled, and he turned his head into the pillow and appeared to fall asleep again. Natasha could get that. The atmosphere was about as friendly as a wolverine on meth, mostly because of the energy radiating from Sharon across the room. Steve crossed and uncrossed his legs.</p><p>"Rest up," he said, as Sharon heaved her bag over one shoulder and crossed to the door. "We move out again in twelve hours."</p><p>"Room service comes at two," Natasha said, and she left, toeing the door open: Sharon hadn't bothered to hold it.</p><p>∆</p><p>He stopped bleeding after a little while. Strings of skin and flesh hung like lace from his burnt shoulder socket. The torch had done the trick.</p><p>He leant his head against the cool wall, and his shoulder screamed at him, agony, the stink of scorched flesh crawling down his throat. </p><p>Soon, it would be time to move again.</p><p>∆</p><p>Sharon flung the bag onto the first bed she saw and it bounced with a creak of springs.</p><p>Natasha slipped in behind her.</p><p>Sharon sat heavily on the bed and tried to tamper back her frustration. Breathe in, breathe out. </p><p>"Sharon-"</p><p>"No," Sharon said acidly, closing her eyes. There was a headache building at the back of her skull. She needed coffee.</p><p>"We need to talk," Natasha said, too quick, too harsh, and Sharon dug the heel of her hand into one eye. Colours bloomed against her vision, flowers of deep red, dull purple.</p><p>"So talk," Sharon replied, and she'd meant to snap, but it came out weary, exhausted.</p><p>The bed dipped down behind her, a knee into the mattress, and Sharon took a sudden shock--</p><p>
  <em>"Get over here before I strangle you," she growls, her throat aching. Romanoff laughs, and her footsteps get louder, drumming into the floor. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The bed dips down behind her, a knee into the mattress, and Romanoff hesitates. Then she slides down, pressed flush against Sharon's back, and her hand settles on Sharon's waist, light.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sharon's pulse roars in her head--</em>
</p><p>She twisted, head turned over her shoulder, and Natasha lowered herself slowly onto the comforter.</p><p>"I'm sorry," she started. Her gaze was cutting into Sharon's face, and she was close now, close enough that Sharon could pick out bits of gold in her poisonously green eyes. "I shouldn't have left you."</p><p>"You're a moron," Sharon agreed, her throat thickening. This, culminating between them, was an empty year of a half-peaked hill of frustration: Natasha had vanished after the night of Fury's death, and Sharon had watched her on the news, hand clenched tight around a fourth glass of wine. She'd felt Natasha slip through her fingers, become invisible, and then call her months later with nothing but an ultimatum.</p><p>Sharon said nothing. She wanted to. She wanted to let it bubble over, explode and watch with satisfaction as Natasha flinched away from the mess she'd left behind.</p><p>Maybe <em>moron</em> was the wrong thing to say. Natasha leant down, hand disappearing into the comforter, and now she was hovering over Sharon's shoulder.</p><p>"It was for your protection," she said, her voice two tones lower than what should have been <em>I'm sorry</em>. A flash of anger raced behind Sharon's eyes, stinging.</p><p>"Jesus Christ, Natasha!" she snapped, flinging herself off the bed. </p><p>"What is so wrong about wanting to keep you safe?" Natasha protested, angry, still draped over the bed.</p><p>Sharon clutched at the wall to steady herself, dragging a hand over her forehead, squashing her anger. She felt wobbly. Like she was on uneven footing: like Natasha had a pulley and any minute now, the floor would fold beneath Sharon's feet.</p><p><em>That</em> was what it had been, ever since Norway.</p><p>Natasha's disappearances. Sharon had been standing with her arms out, and Natasha had ripped a rug from beneath Sharon's feet and ran for the door.</p><p>"I can handle myself!" Sharon growled. "You're not my <em>hero</em>, Romanoff! I trained for this my whole life, and you don't get to tell me that I'm not good enough!"</p><p>"You're not!" Natasha snapped. </p><p>They both froze. Sharon trembled with anger. Time slopped between them with heavy feet.</p><p>"Right," Sharon said, finally. She hated how defeated she sounded. "Well, it must be the conscience that's weighing me down."</p><p>Natasha blinked, flinched. It was petty, and spiteful. But <em>Jesus</em> it felt good. Sharon licked her lips.</p><p>"I don't understand what you're angry about," Natasha replied slowly, ignoring the jab. There were walls descending around her expression, sealing her off. Sharon had half-hoped that Natasha would take the bait and hit back. </p><p>"Try the fact that you disappeared on me three times, with no explanation," Sharon said, getting back into her stride. She cocked her head, mock calculating. "Or maybe when you jumped in on my mission to blow my cover-"</p><p>"I wasn't trying to blow your cover!" Natasha cried, her mouth like a snarl. "Do you think everything I do is just a personal attack on you? Wake up, Carter! Not everyone is trying to kill you!"</p><p>"It fucking feels like that sometimes!" Sharon roared.</p><p>"I'm trying not to put you in danger, is that so wrong?"</p><p>"You say that four hours after you dragged me to the middle of Europe to fight Nazis!" </p><p>"I didn't drag you anywhere! You could have stayed, and done your job like the good American citizen you pretend to be!" Natasha snapped.</p><p>"You can't make up shit about protecting me, Natasha," Sharon growled, and her chest was heaving with anger now. "Why are you trying to make it seem like you're shielding me?"</p><p>"Because you mean something to me, you fucking idiot!" Natasha stood, sharp and furious and trembling. Sharon shrugged it off, watched a flash of hurt slip past Natasha's guard.</p><p>"You know what?" Sharon panted. She could see Natasha's walls crumbling, something bare and pale showing on her face.</p><p>"What?" Natasha snapped back, like she was trying to cover a wound. <em>She would take it back if she could</em>.</p><p>"You don't get to say that," Sharon managed, low, hissing. Natasha flinched, and there it was, the implosion. Careful of the shrapnel, Carter. Careful of the fall.</p><p>"Why not?" And everything was gone. Natasha's face was blank, masked, expertly so.</p><p>"Oh, God," Sharon gritted out, through clenched teeth. "You--" she strode forward, hands balling by her sides, her feet too light for her weight-- "I am-- I am <em>not</em> your liability, Romanoff."</p><p>Natasha glared at her. Close, so close Sharon could pick out those gold slashes in her eyes again.</p><p>"Prove it," she bit out.</p><p>Sharon grabbed Natasha's wrist, gripped her hip, and flung her over the end of the bed. Natasha hit the carpet with a muffled <em>thump</em>, eyes wide with shock. Sharon dropped on top of her, slamming her hand into the floor beside Natasha's ear, knees either side of Natasha's hips, and gripped her by the throat, pinning her into the carpet.</p><p>It felt <em>good</em>. It felt like spiteful satisfaction. </p><p>Natasha didn't squirm, didn't even move. She lay underneath Sharon's hand, breathing hard. Her throat rose and fell beneath Sharon's palm, warm skin. Her pulse tapped up and down, ever so calm.</p><p>Sharon leant down, her damp hair brushing the floor, right up to Natasha's ear, and Natasha twitched.</p><p>Sharon opened her mouth, and with just the barest sound of her lips parting, Natasha shuddered with a sigh. She was tense, the fingers of one hand digging into Sharon's thigh. Sharon pushed Natasha's wrist into the floor.</p><p>"Liability?" she breathed, right into Natasha's ear. Natasha licked her lips, a hiss of skin. Maybe the power was going to her head. Or maybe Natasha--</p><p>Natasha turned her head, until they were eye to eye.</p><p>"You know," she said, and her voice purred into Sharon's ears. "I could kill you from here." Heat pooled in Sharon's lungs.</p><p>"So do it," she hissed back. "Go on, Romanoff. If I'm such a problem, get rid of it." Natasha held her gaze, dark-eyed, breath rasping between her teeth.</p><p>Sharon squeezed her throat.</p><p>Natasha surged upwards, and kissed her, and Sharon froze, Natasha pushed, desperately, her tongue flicking out along the seam of Sharon's lips, warm and electric.</p><p>Sharon gasped into the kiss, her muscles loosening like the snap of an elastic. Her hand fell away from Natasha's throat and slid into her hair. Natasha's nails scraped up the inside of Sharon's wrist, clean and sharp, and before long, Sharon was panting shamelessly over Natasha's lips.</p><p>"I'm so mad at you," she breathed, her breath coming short, shallow in her lungs.</p><p>"Makes the sex so much better," Natasha replied carelessly, and she grinned like silver when Sharon's eyes fluttered closed. </p><p>∆</p><p>"You're taking me in a stretcher over those damn mountains," Sam grunted, glaring at the map spread over his knees.</p><p>"Absolutely," Steve said, mildly. He tapped a point on the map, right on Sam's thigh. "There we go."</p><p>"What d'you think we're gonna find?"</p><p>"Fuck all, probably," Steve said. Sam snorted, nervous. Those dirty words spilling from Steve's clean-cut mouth was some kind of distracting.</p><p>"And if he's there?" he asked, tentatively. He didn't want to probe it, but something like the thunderous look on Steve's face was telling him it needed to be probed.</p><p>"He won't be," Steve grunted.</p><p>"He might." Steve stared at the map, one hand rolling in and out of a fist. Sam thought about pressing his fingers into Steve's palm.</p><p>"Then we go home," Steve replied, finally.</p><p>"Romanoff was talking about saving the world," Sam put in, and it sounded weak and jealous coming out of his mouth.</p><p>
  <em>Barnes is his world.</em>
</p><p>Steve cracked a small smile.</p><p>"Yeah. If we've got time on our docket." He shook himself, coming out of a faraway stare. "Sorry."</p><p>"Don't worry about it," Sam said, offering up his own grin.</p><p>Sometimes it felt like a trap coming crashing down on his shoulder. And all he could do was lift it and limp onwards.</p><p>Steve looked at the window, where sunlight was rolling in, waves of gold.</p><p>"I'm not gonna make you fight, Sam," he said, staring guiltily into the distance.</p><p>"Nobody makes me do anything," Sam replied. He knew it wasn't a reassurance. It wasn't really meant to be one. More of a <em>I'll follow you to death's door, and it's all because of me.</em></p><p>Maybe Steve didn't pick up on that.</p><p>"I know." Steve shrugged. "I don't wanna give you orders. I'm sorry I put you in this position." He was so awkward, huge and hunching in on himself, a twisted look to his mouth, tortured.</p><p>"You don't get to take credit for my heroics," Sam joked, and it came out half-serious. He looked at Steve, a little crooked smile, a sun-drenched eye. </p><p>Steve looked back at him, and Sam wanted to cover it all: the bruises, the blood, the half-breathed hitch when Steve grinned too wide, the fall and the closing eyes and the inevitable burn, the burn that ate him up from the inside out.</p><p>He loved this man.</p><p>Like tripping through barbed wire, torn and trapped, and in the distance, tantalisingly close, the prize gleamed reddishly at him from half a field away.</p><p>Sam closed his eyes, leaning back against the pillows.</p><p>"Russia's a long way away," he said.</p><p>"You don't have to come," Steve offered, from somewhere in Sam's private, dusky dark. Sam snorted.</p><p>"Nah, man. I do everything you do, just slower." And Steve laughed, the last sound in Sam's ears before he slipped back into sleep.</p><p>∆</p><p>They rolled out twelve hours later in a blue van with four heavy trunks of equipment in the back. </p><p>Sam manoeuvred himself into the passenger seat with a grunt of pain, and Sharon and Natasha climbed in amongst the trunks.</p><p>Steve started up the engine, rolled his seat back, fixed the wing mirrors.</p><p>"No naughty stuff back there," Sam teased, and Natasha threw an empty water bottle at his head. "Ouch."</p><p>"Asshole."</p><p>"Leave the poor guy alone," Steve said, pulling out into the road. "Okay, mission brief, Natasha."</p><p>"We sweep in two waves," Natasha said, over the sound of the rattling engine. "Steve in first, I'll be right behind you. Sharon come last. Sam, you're recon in the van."</p><p>"Hell yeah," Sam mumbled, already half-asleep.</p><p>"Floor by floor. If there's no one there, we take as much as we need and go. Hopefully we get a lead."</p><p>"If not?" Sharon asked, slipping a knife out of a sheath and letting the light play over it. Natasha watched her fingers for a second.</p><p>"Then we start again," she said.</p><p>∆</p><p>It healed. Inexplicably. </p><p>He stumbled to his feet, weak, swaying, and gripped the wall with one hand.</p><p>The arm gleamed at him from the edge of the pool of bloodied light, taunting. <em>I almost had you</em>.</p><p>"You didn't." He spat on the floor. "Fuck you, Arnim Zola." He spat again, triumphant, tears leaking from one eye. He trembled. </p><p>He knew salvation would taste this sweet.</p><p>He wondered how he knew.</p><p>∆</p><p>"Not a farm," Sam said, staring out the window. Sharon scrambled into the front as the van stuttered to an unhealthy stop. The building squatted in the middle of a charred, rusty fence perimeter, barbed wire, brambles, stony ground.</p><p>"Definitely not a farm," Steve agreed. No one said anything for a second.</p><p>Steve was straight-backed going in. Chin up, ready for everything, and Sharon saw his knuckles whiten around the straps of his shield.</p><p>Natasha cut a large hole in the fence, and the two of them slipped through, yanking their knees out of the brambles. </p><p>Sharon watched them disappear into the building, a grey, bloodless thing, leering evilly at them through the cold daylight.</p><p>The comms line switched on, and Sharon listened mindlessly to the lilt of Natasha's voice, quiet, precise. Informative.</p><p>"Holy shit," Steve hissed, and Sharon snapped back into focus. Nothing. Only the sound of Steve's harsh breathing, the quick hack-hack of Natasha's footsteps.</p><p>"Steve?" Sam asked urgently. "What is it?" Steve didn't answer. "Carter, go in," Sam snapped, and Sharon ducked through the hole in the fence, quick time to the building, in through the broken door, gun out, down the stairs.</p><p>"Steve, do you read?" she asked. "Natasha?"</p><p>"On my way," Natasha said, breathlessly. "Basement."</p><p>The concrete clicked and whispered beneath Sharon's feet. The basement was a mess of corridors, branching into rooms and halls. </p><p>Footsteps, behind her, Natasha hot-footing it down the stairs, and she rushed past Sharon and down the left hand corridor, the first room on the right. </p><p>Sharon followed.</p><p>∆</p><p>They found him.</p><p>Steve found him, big Steve, Smithsonian Steve, Steve with the shield. </p><p>Steve found him sat in a pool of his own blood.</p><p>"Bucky," Steve choked.</p><p>"I took the arm off," he rasped. There was blood in his mouth. He nodded blindly to the arm. "It's over there."</p><p>"<em>Bucky</em>," Steve said, and he held out his hand, gloved, fingers spread wide. "Jesus, Buck."</p><p>"I'm okay."</p><p>"Jesus." Steve was crying, tears leaking out under his helmet.</p><p>"You're Steve."</p><p>"Yeah," Steve whispered. "Yeah, I'm Steve. And you're Bucky."</p><p>"I know that, you jerk," Bucky said. He flinched away from himself. "I'm-- I know," he said, softly.</p><p>"Oh, man," Steve said, his voice rough from his throat.</p><p>"I'm tired," Bucky said. Steve smiled.</p><p>"I'll bet."</p><p>"You got someplace I can sleep?"</p><p>"Don't you know it," Steve said. There was a pain climbing Bucky's sternum, like relief when you yank a splinter out, or a poisonous arm off. Steve had found him. Everything was gonna be okay.</p><p>"I took the arm off," Bucky repeated.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>vaguely inspired by <a>this</a> Tumblr post</p><p>hope you liked it, feel free to criticise (constructively) in the comments and pop a kudos if u feel so inclined</p></blockquote></div></div>
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